Community Food Bank of NJ: Your new favorite place to volunteer 

By Safiyyah Hunter | February 19, 2024

“That was so much fun” Jade Fuentes, a public relations junior at Kean, excitedly exclaimed as a group of Kean volunteers loaded into the school’s van and headed back to campus after spending the afternoon volunteering at the Community Food Bank of NJ Hillside location. 

If you’re looking for a fun and easy way to give back and engage with your community, then you should spend two hours volunteering at the Community Food Bank of NJ. Volunteering consists of working as a team in a warehouse on an assembly line packing boxes. These boxes are then distributed to families that qualify for free and reduced lunch to take home on weekends in place of school meals. There are about five stations on the volunteer assembly line, where each team member packs items such as: canned goods, milk, cereal etc. as it is automatically rolled down the line for each person to pack. 

Volunteers are led by a team of employees who work side by side to package and organize boxes, while listening to a jamming playlist on a huge speaker. “We have fun here” Steve, who’s been an employee for a year, says of working there. From Miley Cyrus to Destiny’s Child to Lil Baby, the playlist set the mood for a good time. 

Rhandall Almonacy, a sophomore at Kean, majoring in Psychology, and a student leader on campus with the Center for Leadership and Service, has been to the food bank four times with Kean and three times on his own. Rhandall continues to volunteer at the food bank because when volunteering he says, “You feel and see the direct impact of your actions.”

On Friday, January 26, a group of 11 student volunteers from Kean and staff were able to pack a total of 673 boxes. There was a sense of gratitude and pride throughout the room as the number of boxes packed was read back to the students because everyone was hustling to get the job done, while giving it their all. The volunteers enjoyed pushing themselves to see just how many boxes they could make. Everyone kept up a steady pace and worked hard together to complete 673 boxes, there were about 10 huge pallets packed up and ready to be shipped up all completed during this volunteer shift. 

CFBNJ quotes more than 90 million meals being distributed last year. To make this possible, alongside a staff of 250 employees, volunteers across the state donated 88,000 hours, which equates to 42 full time employees. 

The dates of the next field trips to the food bank are March 22^nd and April 27^th.  Presented by the Center for Leadership and Service, this trip is important as well as impactful because, “more than 41 million Americans are food insecure, which means they don’t know if they have enough to feed themselves and their families. Close to one million of them live in New Jersey. Nearly 300,000 of those are children. “ 

Jordan Haynes, a sophomore majoring in Biomedicine, says the trip was “fast paced but I liked it,” and that it was “really fun.” “Fun” seemed to be the consensus word of the day as everyone was all smiles walking the long hallway back to the exit. 

The work that each volunteer group completes at the Community Food Bank of New Jersey truly helps make a difference in distributing meals to families throughout the state. The warehouse is very large and can house 100s of volunteers. The volunteers the more boxes a group can package, so every volunteer counts. 

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